Win or Lose, the 2018 Cowboys have restored faith in the organization

The Dallas Cowboys enter Saturday night’s NFC divisional round as underdogs. Vegas sees the Los Angeles Rams (13-3) as seven-point home favorites as the No. 2 seed is rested, generally healthy and proved to be the much better team over the course of the 16-game regular season schedule. In other words, it should be no shock at all for the Cowboys (11-6) to leave the L.A. Coliseum defeated and to start their offseason before the clock strikes midnight.

Every Cowboys fan will be rooting their hearts out for a victory, but no one will look at the season as a failure if Dallas loses. Or at least, no one should. In fact, win or lose, the 2018 version of the Cowboys should have restored everyone’s faith in the organization and their future.

That’s because the Cowboys are primed to have a long run as contenders in the NFC.

Here’s why.

Jason Garrett and his coaching staff

Deal With It. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

Let’s tackle the most controversial topic first. The fanbase is certainly split over Garrett. For every maddening decision to not be aggressive or a robotic refusal to disclose to the media what he may truly feel about a player or situation, there’s one underlying fact that can’t be disputed.

Garrett’s Cowboys’ teams are winners. Period.

When the Cowboys have their intended starter at quarterback, either Dak Prescott or Tony Romo, here are their records since Garrett took the reigns.

When it all comes down to it, winning is the bottom line, and regardless of what happens with the rest of the team, winning with your starting quarterback is the litmus test for coaches and Garrett has done that. His teams never give up, and his philosophy of limiting the opportunity for mistakes and winning at the end of games has proven to work.

Yes, he is ultimately responsible for the decline of the offense, but most of the tea leaves are pointing to that being corrected once the Dallas season reaches its conclusion. It’s tough to envision offensive coordinator Scott Linehan returning in 2019.

Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports

De facto defensive coordinator Kris Richard will be back, though, and that’s another reason to be excited about this team’s future. When Richard was in Seattle, he was best known for his infatuation with length from his defensive backs. The Legion of Boom served him well.

When he arrived in Dallas last January though, the team didn’t acquire a single cornerback with expectations (we won’t include camp bodies) that fits the profile of 6-foot-1 or above. Now that Richard is going to be back in 2019 and not be a one-year rental, the team can truly implement his philosophy this offseason through free agency and the draft.

They have a quarterback they can win with

Go figure, the quarterback and the head coach are the most controversial parts of the team. Check back in with Garrett’s record since 2016 from above, all that is with Dak Prescott. Quarterback wins aren’t a measure of how good a QB is, but they certainly measure whether or not a team is good with the player at the helm, and Dallas is very good with Prescott under center.

AP Photo/Ron Jenkins

Dak Prescott’s clutch gene and leadership betray his accuracy issues. He maddeningly holds onto the ball too long, yet they still win. If Dallas is able to find the right guy to develop an offense around his skill set, he’s proven that the team will win with him. The team has literally won two out of every three games with him as the starter.

He has a better winning percentage than any QB in team history other than Roger Staubach and Danny White, and he was an afterthought draft pick who has only been in the league for three years. When one looks around the landscape of the NFL, that kind of three-year start combined with Prescott’s TD-to-turnover ratio rarely followed by a regression.

If Prescott doesn’t improve, then he’s already good enough to win with, and if he does, which is likely accomplished simply with experience and a system more conducive to his strengths, he could become iconic.

Youth is Served

AP Photo/Ron Jenkins

Dallas has the youngest roster of the 12 teams which initially made the playoffs. The youth movement indicates that the team will be formidable competitors for the foreseeable future.

Take a look at the 2018 season objectively. The Cowboys jettisoned their two biggest passing game weapons in Dez Bryant and Jason Witten. Not only did those offensive leaders leave, but so did a very strong defensive personality in Orlando Scandrick.

The Cowboys started 3-5, seemingly confused about their identity and unsure of how to win with the team they had constructed. As their youth continued to evolve and get more comfortable in leadership roles, Dallas went 7-1 down the stretch.

In hindsight and without the emotion of going through the roller coaster of each game, doesn’t that make perfect sense?

Now, they are not only the youngest team in the playoffs, but per Blogging The Boys excellent research, on a snap-adjusted level, they are the youngest team in the entire league and the only NFC team in the top 5 to make the playoffs.

There are several players up for new deals in the next few years, but Dallas has the cap space to keep them all in house without much issue. In other words, this team’s core should be able to continue on this path forward for several more seasons.

The personnel architect is secured, too

Marc Serota/Getty Images

It was a strange beginning to the offseason with firings this year. While one quarter of the league will go into 2019 with new head coaches, there wasn’t a single GM firing that took place. That of course is good news for Dallas fans, because any opening in the league is a worry that Will McClay could leave.

Titles aren’t everything, and although McClay doesn’t have complete control over everything personnel related, he feels respected enough by the Jones family — through financial compensation, public support and assumably privately — that he is not ready to uproot his family in the quest for anything more than what he has. McClay’s own team knows how valuable he is, and he certainly commands the respect among other front offices around the league for the role he has played in Dallas’ up trend since 2014.

What McClay has done to rebuild the Cowboys’ roster is amazing, and there’s no reason to think he won’t continue on his path. The scuttlebutt is that the only first-round pick he didn’t do well with, Taco Charlton, his scouting department was overruled on.

They probably won’t make that mistake again. McClay has far too many under-a-rock finds in the bargain bin of free agency to sneeze at, too. After even the controversial selection of Leighton Vander Esch worked out incredibly, there’s simply no reason not to think that Dallas’ future moves will continue being net positives. That’s reassuring after 15 years of Kanye shrugs.

Conclusion

Between all of it; Garrett’s success, a clutch quarterback who a team can win with, a young talented roster and the man in place to keep the pipeline flowing, how could any realistic evaluator look at this Dallas team and not be ecstatic with the possibilities over the next several years.

Regardless of how Saturday night’s game turns out, the 2018 season has restored faith in the direction of the Cowboys organization.

They might as well go ahead and win in Los Angeles just to prove the point.

Gallery

Cowboys Divisional Round Player Power Rankings

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